


Some Capacity for Magic

by A_Candle_For_Sherlock



Category: Arthur Conan Doyle - Fandom, Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Aziraphale doesn't, Aziraphale is also a mess but he gives decent advice when he tries, Crossover, Crowley would be a more sympathetic listener on that point, Doyle deserves better, Doyle does believe in fairies, Gen, George Turnavine Budd is a mess, Pre-Slash, but he's asleep for the next several decades yet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-15
Updated: 2020-11-15
Packaged: 2021-03-09 21:55:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,650
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27563389
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/A_Candle_For_Sherlock/pseuds/A_Candle_For_Sherlock
Summary: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle stops by A.Z. Fell and Co's reluctant bookshop in a talkative mood.
Comments: 19
Kudos: 54





	Some Capacity for Magic

**Author's Note:**

  * For [apliddell](https://archiveofourown.org/users/apliddell/gifts).



> Written at the request of my dear Lid, with love.

It's a soft, slow, grey, lovely Saturday and Aziraphale is deep in _The Importance of Being Earnest_ , a wholly pleasurable if completely nonsensical experience, when the bell rings.

Not for a polite caller, standing patient and reasonable outside Aziraphale's sanctuary, amenable to being told that he isn't welcome now--oh, no. The bell rings, and moments later a breath of cool air reaches the chair where Aziraphale sits with his cocoa and his book, and then the door closes. Someone is _inside_.

Aziraphale, forgiving as he is by nature, is up and out of his chair with outraged righteousness. He strides toward the front of the shop, book in hand--the cocoa he left with a stern glance that ensured it would maintain its warmth with its dignity--prepared to confront and dispel the intrusion promptly.

The offender, hands clasped behind him, looks up--he is broad and rather beautiful, which increases the annoyance--and says clearly, "Do you believe in spirits?"

Aziraphale is brought up short. This is rare; he's been around humans for a good many millennia now and likes to fancy himself equable to however they may greet him, or parse him. But this is baffling: is this an accusation? a challenge? an invitation to self-disclosure, or a trap?

"Ghosts," the man says after a moment, earnest yet in the face of Aziraphale's bewilderment. "Or fairies. You know, things of that sort."

"Oh," says Aziraphale, gaining control of his gape, "yes, they are popular right now, aren't they?"

The baffling man grimaces a little. "That's one way to put it. D'you have any books on them?" 

"I'm afraid not. That's rather--outside of my expertise." He's getting his footing now. A Spiritualist! He can deal with one of those.

"Don't believe in them?"

"Well, I don't know any myself. Belief is a complex matter. It's important to your--to humanity, I do know that."

"I don't see what's complex about it. We don't believe we're alone in the world--that's all. It would be absurd, all of humanity sprung up alone under the heavens, the only sensible creatures. Wouldn't it?"

"Possibly," Aziraphale concedes. Sometimes he wondered if they'd have done better, left to themselves; but certainly no one could expect Heaven and Hell to just stay out of it. They wanted to have a hand in things. And he was the chosen hand. A more effective hand at his task, perhaps, now that his counterpart was absent the area. A more efficient nudger toward the just and more judicious elements of human nature--and yet--

"I think you're quite good enough at being human on your own," he offers. "No messages needed from the Beyond. You know enough to get on with." He finds a rare sociable curiosity within himself as the man settled into a firmer stance, hands in his pockets, staring squarely at him. Not a shy one with his ideas, this man. Ready to take him on and stand by them.

"It's not enough, though, is it? It's the noblest part of our nature, the need to know more. The courage to go after it."

"Even if it's dangerous?" He doesn't think fairies pose much hazard, or ghosts, but that questing mortal need to ask, to try, to push--that worries him. But he does understand--it isn't forbidden, for them.

"And all of us want to talk to the ones who've gone on." The man's voice has dropped. Aziraphale, unused to any attentiveness toward human complications, still recognizes the weight of that tone. He feels it in his marrow, in fact.

"No one likes to be left behind," he admits, and watched the man's face turn toward him in sudden hope of understanding.

"We don't! There's always something left to be said."

"I know." He does. It's so easy for things to go wrong between creatures. So easy to go a whole lifetime, or a few, without ever saying what you'd meant to.

"If we miss our way while we're living, don't you think the dead might be able to say where we'd gotten off course?"

He'd like to say yes. But-- "Why would they? Would Death change them? Wouldn't they still be themselves? Supposing you really could ask them."

"Well, I don't know. But one hopes--we do so poorly at admitting what we do know while we're here. Perhaps they'd have less pride."

"Perhaps," Aziraphale allows. Pride had been forbidden. He'd been quite good at avoiding it when he'd arrived here--ages back, and he's been on Earth a very long time. Around all these people. "I can't see any guarantee of it. Perhaps we could stand to have less pride while we've still got a chance at living without it. I don't think it contributes very much to our happiness."

"But who are we without our pride?" The man seems wholly earnest.

"Honester, maybe."

"Some of us--that's true." The man has lovely eyes; and while Aziraphale often feels himself ignorant of mortal features' subtleties, these are quite clearly sad. Aziraphale is a guardian. He holds out his hand.

"I'm A.Z. Fell."

"I'm Doctor Doyle."

"Pleasure to meet you." Aziraphale shakes his hand, not allowing the oddity of all of this to show in his face; says gently, "Now who were you thinking of? Who'd have told the truth without his pride?"

"Oh--well. One never knows. But--I was thinking of an old friend--a colleague of mine."

"Someone you trusted." It's clear in his face--his gentle voice.

"And he trusted me. I think he did. He asked me--he asked me to stay with him, and to work with him. We'd known each other ages."

"That's a rarity, that kind of history," says Aziraphale, and tries not to sigh.

"Well, it didn't work out. I've left--and he's told me to stay gone. My family didn't like him--he liked to cause trouble. To ruffle people up, you know. But he was so charming--and he made dull days better, and he liked me..." Doyle's voice trails away, and Aziraphale becomes aware that his hands are twisting themselves together desperately. He stills them with an effort; clasps them at his waist, and nods encouragingly. Doyle says, pleading, "I did nothing wrong--he seemed determined to misunderstand me. Maybe we couldn't have kept on, but he might have heard me out."

"Yes, he could have. He ought to have heard you out." He is nodding, emphatically, and there is too much heat in his voice. He shuts his mouth and counts to five; takes a deep breath, and adds, "but perhaps it was hard for him, being around you--if your family disapproved, and if he knew it would never get better--if you could never really defend him from them."

"I did try," says Doyle, quietly, and Aziraphale finds himself without an answer. He pulls at his waistcoat; rubs at the watch-chain draped across it; straightens his collar. He is a guardian, and a defender; but he has never tried to defend someone against his own. Humanity is always something more than he could be.

At last the man looks up again. "Do you believe in magic, anyway?"

Well, that was something he could give him. "Of course I do."

"You see?" Some light came into the eyes; a spark of something unextinguishable and glad. "I've been trying to tell them--but you've read all these books. You know it's possible."

"Mind you, I didn't say advisable. It's not all tame."

"No, of course not. But some things are innocent--and some of us have the potential--"

"Some capacity for magic, yes. It's in you. All of you, I think."

"Do you have anything about it here? Any texts?" Doyle is beaming, earnest--lit up from the inside. He wonders if Doyle's family had ever seen him that way--if they'd had any idea what he could be.

"Well, perhaps--you might try the British museum? They're great collectors of things--" And then, as the man's face falls, "Well, I'll check in the back. I may have something." There are a few Zoroastrian texts buried back there, some pre-Druidic lore he'd copied down himself, and a couple of pamphlets he'd picked up at the corner book-shop last year, on mankind's secret potential for future sight. Mostly nonsense, he thinks, but still. What did he know of what they could do?

On the way to the back shelves, he passes by the silk scarf piled on the desk--Crowley's scarf, left behind the last time he'd come to visit. He ought to bring it to him. He would have brought it back to him, if only he knew where he stayed--why had he never asked him where he stayed? Never mind what his people would have said if they'd caught him at Crowley's home--he'd never risked it, and now he never could.

"No charge," he tells Doyle when he laid the texts in his hands. "Just make good use of them--don't summon up anything too unearthly. You have enough to deal with on your own."

"No promises!" says Doyle, lightly, "but I think I won't, anyway. You're an all-right man, Fell." He fills Aziraphale's doorframe. He is smiling at him.

Aziraphale's corporation operates more or less under his command, but sometimes it had a mind of its own, and just now there was a suspicious heat in his cheeks. He blinks into the glow of Doyle's mortal, wholehearted attention. "Thank you," he says.

"Stop by my club on Portland Place, will you? The Hundred Guinea Club--if you'd like some company. The fellows would love you."

"I might," says Aziraphale, carefully. The bell rings once more, as the door swings shut. Familiar silence settles round him again.

"I might like that," he says again, into the quiet, and finds he means it, after all.

**Author's Note:**

> Crowley and Aziraphale's falling-out takes place in 1862; Doyle and Budd's in 1882, so Aziraphale has had a few decades to get over his initial shock and consternation that Crowley would ask him to go directly against Heaven. He's now deep into regret, though he couldn't really say why--he hasn't admitted to himself yet that Heaven is really wrong. He only knows Crowley is the brightest spot in his year and he's had quite a few pass now without him.
> 
> Doyle and Budd were friends since school, and Doyle moved in with him as a young doctor, but Budd was rougher and wilder than Doyle, and frightened Doyle’s mother; Budd found letters she’d written to Doyle about her bad opinion of him, assumed Doyle shared it, and told him never to speak to him again. Doyle was heartbroken, but too proud and hurt to argue his case; but he never forgot him. Budd inspired his Stark Munro letters and possibly Holmes himself.
> 
> Doyle's club in this story is, of course, a real gay gentlemen's club--the famous club where Aziraphale learned his dancing. I've no idea if Doyle would have been a member there, in life, but this is fiction, where I can give him some happiness, and let him share it with Aziraphale. They both needed the love.


End file.
